Confessions of a Private Dick

Confessions of a Private Dick

BY TIMOTHY LEA

Contents

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Also available in the CONFESSIONS series

About the Author

Also by Timothy Lea & Rosie Dixon

Copyright

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

‘I still don’t understand how she knew that he knew,’ says Sid. ‘When he went down to the waterfront in the rain and they fished the two stiffs out of the drink, the D.A. gave him a funny sort of smile. Did that mean that he knew as well?’

‘Search me, Sid,’ I say. ‘I lost touch when the bloke in the wheelchair opened up with his artificial leg. That bird had a nice pair, didn’t she?’

I see immediately that my observation has given offence. ‘ “That bird had a nice pair”! ’ snorts Sid. ‘Is that all you can think about? I’m trying to have an intelligent conversation about the plot of the film and all you can do is give vent to your knocker complex. Can’t you raise your mind to anything higher?’

‘There wasn’t much higher than those bristols,’ I say. ‘Honestly, Sid, that girl had curves in places where other people don’t have places.’

‘I still can’t understand it,’ muses Sid. ‘Maybe they cut something out of it. All those bleeding commercials. They have to make room for them somehow.’

‘They make it so difficult to follow, don’t they?’ I say. ‘I was wondering who that mysterious bird was who kept running down the beach every half hour. I never cocoed it was a cigar commercial.’

‘You only watch when there’s a bird on the screen, don’t you?’ says Sid. ‘The television companies are wasting their time putting out programmes with blokes as far as you’re concerned. I’d have thought you’d have had enough after our trip home with Nancy and Felicity.’

Do those names ring a bell? If the answer is yes you may well have come across them in Confessions of a Plumber’s Mate. I certainly did. What a right couple of nautical ravers they were. Employed to look decorative on the poop deck of the SK498 at the Indoor Outdoor Exhibition but, in reality, knocking back a couple of bottles of ‘Southern Courage – the drink that lost the South the American Civil War’ – and taking it out on Sid and myself – not so much taking it out as ripping it out! Small wonder that we lost control of the boat as well as ourselves and drove off the marina and through the exit doors at Earls Court. That was all right because the boat was designed to travel on land as well as water. The only drawback was that it did not travel so well under water. We found that out when we ran up the back of a car transporter on the Chelsea Embankment and dived into the Thames. Frankly, I thought we had less chance of coming up than a winning line on a pools coupon but we surfaced just opposite Battersea Funfair – or where it used to be. A bloke who was about to commit suicide by jumping off Battersea Bridge took one look at us and fell backwards in a dead faint – actually, I must be honest, I made that last bit up. Sorry, Mum always said I was a whimsical child.

By the time we got ashore, the romance was deader than a set of election promises and we had drunk all the Southern Courage – or maybe the two things were connected. The girls got a taxi out of our lives and we got a 49 bus leaving a trail of bubbles behind us where the SK498 got its head down for a long kip on the bed of the Thames.

‘I hope that the whole distressing incident is not shambolic of the future of British industry,’ says Sid as we sip our tea and watch the little pinpoint of light die away in the middle of the telly screen.

‘Symbolic,’ I say, thinking as I speak that Sid may be right. ‘Crispin isn’t exactly going to cream his jeans over this lot, is he?’

‘I’ve been thinking about Crispin,’ says Sid.

Just in case your shop was sold out, or in a fit of reckless madness, you thought you could exist without Confessions of a Plumber’s Mate – or you have forgotten – let me point out that Crispin Fletcher is our interior decorator boss/partner who has been instrumental in securing us the job of maintenance men at the Indoor Outdoor Exhibition. As I have intimated, first indications suggest that he is going to be less than totally satisfied with our latest contribution to the profit/loss account of Home Enhancers.

‘What have you been thinking?’ I say.

‘I’ve been thinking that I might have made a mistake,’ says Sid.

This statement affects me like an Irish navvy stamping out his cigar butt on my groin. Though speedy to confess to weakness in others, Sid has never won renown for pointing the rigid digit in his own direction.

‘Mistake, Sid?’ I say.

‘Well,’ Sid double banks his lips in a north-easterly direction and waggles his mitts. ‘More an error of judgement than a mistake. A miscalculation.’ I breathe more easily. For a moment I thought that Sid’s subterranean passage had played havoc with his down the drains. ‘There is a stage beyond Crispin.’

This is indeed interesting news. I had always thought that Crispin went about as far as you could go. It is not everybody that wears pink velvet kneebreeches and sabots especially when they are pushing a wire basket round the supermarket. I know because I saw him. He was wheeling fourteen avocados and a jar of Vaseline at the time – don’t ask me, your guess is as good as mine.

‘When I decided to turn my back on big business,’ says Sid who was sacked from his position at the Slumbernog Bedding Company – ‘And decided that there was too much capital investment involved in the transport business’ – two-thirds of the Nogget transport fleet was wiped out by unfortunate accidents involving ladies – ‘I was approaching the answer: fewer hands make light broth and keep the overheads down.’

‘I see,’ I say, wondering what he is rabbiting on about.

‘Home Enhancers was right in concept but it was a mistake to get involved with Crispin. Even one other bloke can be one bloke too many. There are misunderstandings, personality clashes. What you need is a really lightweight operation: one bloke issuing the orders and another bloke carrying them out with scrupulous attention to detail.’

‘I see,’ I say. ‘So you’re not going to give Crispin another chance?’

If Sid perceives that there is a trace of sarcasm in my voice he is a master at disguising it. ‘I don’t think so,’ he says. ‘I don’t think there would be any point.’ At that moment, the telephone rings. Sid puts down his cuppa and strolls across the lounge of his sumptuous Vauxhall pad. ‘Hello, Crispin,’ he says as the earpiece nestles against his earhole. That is all he does say. He listens for a while and then stares into the mouthpiece like he reckons Crispin might be just visible through the little holes.

‘What did he say?’ I ask.

Sid puts the phone down. ‘He agrees with me.’

‘Well, that’s that then,’ I say. ‘Back to the Labour. It’s getting so crowded these days you have to be early to be sure of a chair.’

‘I know,’ says Sid. ‘It’s hard work, isn’t it? They ought to send it to you through the post. Think of all the clerical staff it would save. One bloke could probably do the whole thing.’

‘Yes, but that would make the others redundant,’ I explain. ‘Then they’d all go on strike, wouldn’t they?’

‘If they were redundant, it wouldn’t matter, would it?’ says Sid. ‘They couldn’t do anything.’

‘They’d probably picket the place so the one bloke who was doing all the work couldn’t get in,’ I say.

Sid’s face contorts in anger. ‘Bastards!’ he says. ‘No wonder this country’s going to the dogs when bloody bolsheviks can prevent you getting your unemployment benefit. What’s the ordinary working man expected to do?’

Further discussion on this interesting point is interrupted by the arrival of a taxi outside the front door. Out of it gets my sister and Sid’s wife – only one person as regular readers will recall – in a soaking wet condition and wearing an expression that would be rejected by a voodoo mask maker as being likely to frighten off prospective customers. Since we are both well acquainted with her vindictive nature and could be accused of having contributed to her bedraggled condition (she fell in the marina when the SK498 went berserk) it is a matter of seconds before we are letting ourselves out by the back door.

‘A taxi,’ says Sid. ‘That’s marvellous, isn’t it? Even if I had a million quid I could never travel in a taxi. I’d feel awkward somehow. But it doesn’t worry her, does it?’

‘I expect she’s more adaptable,’ I say diplomatically. I could also say that, thanks to the success of the boutiques and the wine bars, Rosie is a blooming sight nearer to a million quid than her old man and therefore able to afford the odd taxi, but I deem it inadvisable. There is no doubt that Sid’s half-baked schemes to make money at any cost are a direct result of Rosie’s successful moola-making activities.

‘Hello, Dad Dad.’ The appealing waif fondling his ferret through the bars of its cage with a length of bamboo cane is my nephew, Jason Noggett – or ‘The Child Piranha’ as he is known in some circles.

‘Don’t poke him like that,’ says Sid. ‘He doesn’t like it.’

‘When you buy Jason rabbit, Dad Dad?’ says the little fiend, looking up towards the house thoughtfully.

Sid opens the back gate. ‘I’ve told you! You’re not having one until we get another cage.’

‘That’s right,’ I say. ‘We don’t want Mr Ferret to gobble bunny up, do we?’

Jason flashes me a quick ‘Piss off, Uncle Timmy!’ look and continues to address his father. ‘Mummy home now? Daddy go boozer?’

‘I’m having a word with your uncle,’ says Sid irritably. ‘Where’s Jerome?’

‘We play Red Indians,’ says Jason, giving his ferret a last affectionate poke. ‘He staked out on ant hill.’

In fact, it is only the manure heap next door but the child is in a very anti-social condition.

‘I don’t know what’s got into that child,’ says Sid when we have handed over some ‘sweety money’ blackmail and been allowed to continue on our way. ‘He’s never wanted for anything – except that alligator he’s always on about – and yet he’s a real handful.’

‘Kids today,’ I say in my best ‘old codgers’ manner.

‘That’s right,’ says Sid. ‘Sometimes I think we’re cruel when we try to be kind. You give them too much and they miss out on the simple things.’

‘Still, it’s a violent age, isn’t it?’ I say. ‘That’s got to have an effect on them.’

‘Must have an effect on all of us,’ says Sid. ‘Still, it’s always been like that, hasn’t it? Look at that film on the telly this afternoon. Every time that bloke stuck the brim of his fedora round the frosted glass somebody bashed him over the nut.’

‘And it wasn’t just “The Mob” was it?’ I say. ‘Those Bay City cops were really mean, weren’t they? You needed a paper bag to put your teeth in if you went round to report that your cat was missing.’

‘Yet all the time he preserved a kind of simple dignity, didn’t he?’ says Sid admiringly. ‘One man against a corrupt society – and pulling all the crumpet on the side. Can’t be bad.’ He suddenly clutches my arm. ‘Timmo! I’ve just had an idea.’ Strong men – and ones with brains – run when Sid says that but I stand my ground bravely. ‘You know he worked out of that office above the launderette?’

‘You need capital to set up a launderette,’ I say. ‘Anyway, all the best sites have gone.’

‘I didn’t mean that!’ says Sid. ‘I was referring to the simplicity of the operation. All you need is a telephone. You could do it from home.’

‘Mum wouldn’t stand for it,’ I say. ‘All that washing everywhere. Where would you hang it?’

‘Forget about the bloody washing!’ shouts Sid so loud that an old lady wheels her shopping basket into a lamp post. ‘I’m talking about becoming a private detective. Don’t you see? It’s perfect. No overheads, no partners, no qualifications. Crime is the only growth industry in this country at the moment and more people are getting divorced than get married. We can’t go wrong. What’s more, it’s legit.’

‘Yeah,’ I breathe, buying my imagination a one-way ticket to romantic places. ‘I can just see it: “Timothy Lea, Private Dick”.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘I find it very unsavoury,’ says Mum.

‘So do I,’ says Dad pushing his plate away. ‘I think it was a mistake to fry it. I never heard of anybody frying spaghetti.’

‘I thought it would make a change,’ says Mum. ‘It seems wicked to throw food away these days. Anyway, I wasn’t talking about that. I was referring to this detective business. I don’t like to think of Timmy getting mixed up with a lot of criminals.’

‘You’ve left it a bit late to express concern in that direction, haven’t you?’ sneers Dad. ‘It’s the criminals you ought to start feeling sorry for. Get your precious Sidney amongst them and they’ll be asking for police protection. He’ll be in his element with a load of Bernards.’ (Bernard Dillon: Villain. Ed.)

‘Do you want your father’s spaghetti?’ sniffs Mum. ‘There’s some more gravy.’

I decline gracefully and wonder how Mum manages to get that distinctive roasted flavour into the tea.

‘I hope the neighbours don’t get to hear about it,’ says Dad. ‘You remember what it was like when Mrs Brown’s boy became a copper. Nobody would speak to the family for three months. Even when he got busted for nicking the Doctor Barnardo’s box, people were slow to forgive. It won’t be easy for your mother and I if the news gets out. We’re well thought of in this neighbourhood.’

‘Only because people think you’re a fence,’ I say. ‘All that stuff you nick from work. It’s no wonder we had that bloke round with the rings.’

Dad’s habit of knocking off items from the lost-property office where he works has not gone unnoticed by the neighbours. Probably because he has an unhealthy leaning towards large stuffed animals that do not fit snugly into any of the suitcases he has nicked. Talking of suitcases, I remember how when I was a kid I used to think he was a conjurer. He brought home this blooming enormous suitcase, opened it, took out another suitcase, opened it, took out another suitcase, opened it, took out— in the end he had six suitcases and a set of cork table mats with the pattern nearly faded away. I remember how disappointed I was with the table mats because they did not do anything. It was like a game of pass-the-parcel when you end up with a tooth brush.

‘I’ve never done anything to reproach myself with,’ moans Dad. ‘I’ve served three kings and a queen and none of them found cause to point the finger at me. They weren’t half-inched, those rings. They’d just fallen off the back of a lorry, that’s all.’

‘Must have been why most of the stones had jumped out of their settings,’ I say. ‘You were done there, there’s no doubt about it.’

‘The boy’s right, Walter,’ says Mum. ‘That eternity ring you gave me dissolved the first time I did the washing up.’

Dad is still shouting about ingratitude as I go out of the door. Sid has made me responsible for finding us an office and I have an appointment with a Miss Bradford who is going to show me some offices at ‘my end of the market’. I remember the phrase because the geezer I spoke to on the phone underlined it when I told him how much we were willing to pay. Sid has a theory that it is an advantage for a private eye to have an office on the shady side of town and there seems little likelihood of him failing to achieve his aim.

Miss Bradford is richly knockered and has a dark complexion – very dark. In fact she is black all over, or, at least, all the parts I can see. Hold my bike for a minute and I’ll check. I gaze with interest at the way the waft and weft of her sweater is being stretched asunder by the thrust of her bust and then move up to her wide brown eyes. Two of them, placed on either side of her hooter to achieve maximum effect. She seems surprised to see me.

‘You’re much younger than the fellers I usually show round,’ she says. ‘What are you, a designer, commercial artist?’

‘I’m a dick,’ I say. The moment I hear how it sounds I wish I hadn’t. ‘A private investigator,’ I correct myself.

Miss Bradford nods. ‘Good, I thought you might need a lot of daylight for your work. In most of the places I’ll be showing you, you wouldn’t be able to see if you were holding your pencil the right way round unless the light was on.’

‘Where are you from?’ I say, always dynamite when it comes to casual banter.

‘Peckham,’ she says.

‘I meant before that.’

‘Southwark.’ Her eyes send tracer bullets towards mine. ‘You thought I was going to say Bongo Bongo, didn’t you?’

‘South Bongo Bongo,’ I say. ‘I’m from Clapham, myself. Europe’s Disneyland. It’s looking lovely this time of year. The goal mouths are cutting up a bit but you can’t have everything, can you?’

Miss Bradford does not reply to my question and I sense that the state of the football pitches in my homeland is not of prime concern to her. There is more than a touch of the Matilda Ngoblas about her and it is a real trip down mammary lane to case those bounteous boobs. Matilda, faithful readers will recall, used to be one of our next door neighbours at 17 Scraggs Lane, ancestral home of the Leas since times immoral and it was with her that I proved that two young people can reach across the barriers of race and colour, and have it off on the sitting-room carpet just like you and me – well, just like me and your sister. Unfortunately, Dad’s unexpected arrival put the kibosh on that spot of instant romance but I see no reason why lightning Lea should not strike twice.

‘What do you think of it?’

I wrench my mince pies off Miss Bradford’s bristols and look round the room. ‘This is where the bluebottles come to die, is it?’ I say with a light laugh.

‘It needs cleaning up,’ agrees the comely blackamoor. ‘Still, what do you expect for the money you’re prepared to pay? It’s a wonder you’re not working out of a telephone box.’

We would have been if Sid had thought of it, I muse to myself idly tracing ‘fuck’ in the dust on top of the desk – well, it makes a change from ‘clean me’, doesn’t it? One thing I do like about the office is the frosted glass in the door that gives out on to the corridor. Just right for grabbing a trailer of Lauren Bacall’s profile or the outline of the two hoods who have come to bounce you off the walls. I can just see myself behind the desk reaching out for the two fingers of Tizer that live in the top right hand drawer and – hang on a minute! The profile outside the door is not at all the kind of thing I was thinking of. It is of some geezer armed with an enormous hard going into orbit at an angle of forty-five degrees to his body. I glance at Miss Bradford and see that she has clocked this new threat to our already over-congested airways. An expression more of interest than of outrage hovers around her dusky chops. This is too much! I always suspected that flashers had big ones and this proves it. Filthy brute, going around making everyone discontented with their lot – or in my case, not such a lot.

‘Excuse me,’ I say briskly. ‘I must put an end to this.’

‘Just what I was thinking,’ murmurs Miss Bradford wistfully.

I try not to think what she means by that remark and wrench open the door. Maybe if I gave the bloke 10p he would go and stand outside somebody else’s office.

‘Now look—!’ I begin. I stop when I see an old man holding a broom at his side. ‘All right?’ I say weakly.

The old man looks me up and down as if he finds it a very unrewarding occupation. ‘Your flies are undone,’ he says. I mumble something and close the door.

Miss Bradford is laughing. ‘I thought that was too good to be true,’ she says.

‘Yeah. Looked, er – a bit funny, didn’t it?’ I say.

‘Looked like the answer to a maiden’s prayer,’ says Miss Bradford. ‘That’s what sent you bustling to the door, wasn’t it? You didn’t like the competition.’

‘I don’t think of flashers as competition,’ I say. ‘They do that instead of the real thing.’ I turn my back and do up my fly.

‘Are you going to give me a demonstration?’ mocks Miss B.

‘What of?’ I say.

‘That’s up to you. You’re handling the equipment.’

‘I’m not handling it,’ I say. ‘I’m readjusting my clothing.’

‘Are you shy?’ she says.

If I was going to be honest, I would say yes. Self-confident birds always knock me back on my heels and this one is a spade to boot. We all know what they’re like, don’t we? Carrying a black anaconda between their legs and blessed with a natural sense of rhythm. It is not the dancing I am worrying about as much as the ballroom if you take my meaning. Percy is no pouch slouch but size-wise he may fall a few feet short of what Miss Bradford is used to when the tom toms beat out their jungle love call to the turn turns.

‘Shy?’ I say with the suspicion of an amazed laugh. ‘Me? Ouch!’ I have just stumbled back against the filing cabinet and those handles do stick in your back, don’t they? The whole structure gives a hollow rumble and I clear my throat uneasily. ‘This comes with it, does it?’

Miss Bradford gazes into my minces as if she expects the answer to my question to come up on them like a telex machine. ‘It’s funny about white skin,’ she says as if talking to herself. ‘It looks so soft.’ She reaches up and draws her hand down the side of my cheek. ‘Terry likes it.’

‘Does he?’ I say. ‘What a pity he’s not here. I could have—’

‘She is here,’ says Miss Bradford propping her bristols against my all the best. ‘I’m Terry. Short for Teresa.’

‘It’s funny you should say that,’ I say. ‘I’ve always been partial to – er, br-bl-col—’

‘Black pussy,’ says Terry helpfully. ‘I could tell by the way you were looking at me that you wanted to get my panties off.’

‘Ye-es,’ I say. Terry Bradford is what you might call direct when it comes to filling in the plot.

‘But you’re not going to get the chance.’ My spirits fall and percy suspends his clumsy clamber into the vertical. Could it be that I am in the presence of a prick teaser – or prick Teresa as seems more nearly the case? ‘I’m not wearing any.’

This is interesting news and delivered in terms that invite verification – good word that, isn’t it? I think I will be using it a lot when I become a private dick: ‘I’m going to have to ask you to verify that alibi, Mrs Cholmondeley.’ Terry’s well-defined lips are hovering before the identical feature on my own Jem Mace and a tilt of the nut is all it requires to set the merry scamps clambering over each other. Whilst the bits that stop your cakeholes from fraying are thus pleasurably engaged, I slip one of my germans up the back of Terry’s dress and feel the overhang of her well-defined sit feature cutting into her thighs. Some birds have back bumpers like a couple of under-filled water cushions but this chick is the last load out of the melon field. Firm as a weightlifter’s handshake and definitely unhampered by any contact with the knicker counter of Marks and Sparks. It is probably my imagination set off by her own comments on white flesh but there seems to be a tougher texture to her skin. More tensility. It all helps build up the impression of strength and formidableness that is restraining the progress of my hampton towards the ceiling. Will the midnight mauler of the Clapham Common children’s playground sand pit be a match for the coloured snatch? That is the question the free world is asking itself at this time. Normally my action man kit would be pointing towards the airholes in my hooter but at the moment it is a quarter to nine and losing time fast. A most unusual occasion when you consider the proximity of this obviously willing curve carnival. Wake up Lea! What has got into the marrow arrow that it seems unlikely to get into anything else? Most of the time my mind and body work independently. Now, my fears of being found wanting threatens to prevent me from slipping my fun gunny into this jungle bunny.